Leclerc stumped by mystery fall-off in qualifying pace

Charles Leclerc will start Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix from eighth place, and he admitted that he had been disappointed by the performance of the Ferrari SF-24 in qualifying at Suzuka.

Completing just one flying lap in the final round, Leclerc ended up seven tenths slower than Max Verstappen's pole time. The Monegasque's own team mate Carlos Sainz was fourth quickest despite being only a tenth faster than Leclerc.

Leclerc had expected to be closer to the Red Bull cars after Friday's practice and was frustrated to be on the back foot again on Saturday, saying that the team had to look into the reasons behind the slide.

“Most of the time when you are finishing P8 there’s always an explanation for it, whether there's a mistake in one corner or just the setup,” he told the media in the paddock at Suzuka.

“But everything feels okay. The balance is not way off. We can always improve, but in a bit, like every qualifying," he explained.

• Read also: Verstappen and Perez lock out Japanese GP front row in Suzuka qualifying

"If I rely on the feeling at the end of the lap then I’m like, okay, this is quite a good lap and this is a good lap. Then you look at the board and you are a second off.

“When this happens normally we look more at tyres and the way you bring the tyres to temperature," he continued. "I’ve tried many different things today and it didn’t work, any of the things I’ve tried, so for now I don’t have the answer.

“But honestly, the car felt in a good place," he insisted. "The lap felt quite okay, just not enough grip available to go faster.

“There's a pattern since Q1 that has been a bit strange," he continued. "I believe it's more related to tyre preparation, but it's not been only once this year.

“We are further away than what we thought, maybe the car characteristics doesn’t suit as much at Suzuka as the Red Bull does," he continued. “It’s a bit strange because I think on the long run we are pretty good.

“So we'll have to look into it and try to understand what I can do better to get those tyres ready for qualifying [in future races], because at the moment I'm struggling mostly with that.

“I don’t really have an explanation for it now," he added, while taking some amount of encouragement from the Ferrari's race pace in practice which looked a lot closer to that of Verstappen and Sergio Perez.

“I'm optimistic about our race pace, but I'm less optimistic to overtake on a track like this," he conceded. “Suzuka is normally a very difficult track to overtake.

"If we have enough pace to overtake then I think we can do great tomorrow, but it's going to be difficult.”

That won't be as much of a problem for Sainz starting from the second row alongside mcLaren's Lando Norris, meaning he'll have a chance to attack the Red Bulls ahead of him going into the first corner.

“After FP3 we thought we didn’t have the pace as FP1 and we thought it was going to be a tougher weekend,” he commented. “And we actually made a good step in quali [but] Lando two-tenths in front for P3 was too much around this track.

"Here the gaps are very, very tight and two tenths was too much, but I did some very good laps in this quali," he said. "I’m happy with my performance.

"It’s just a track where the Ferrari is not the fastest car around, and we know why.”

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